Traitor backstories and objectives

Suggestions
1

I think we can all agree that, in our current state, the objectives of traitors don’t really lend much to RP.
And I feel like a big part of that is that well-developed characters are suddenly thrust into a role of an enemy agent with no flavour text or backstory. But what if that wasn’t the case? Maybe people could select from preset backstories or get one assigned randomly, depending on their objectives?
And so, I present to you a couple of ideas I had.

First of all, we borrow certain objectives from other servers. Stealing items means that, instead needing to have the item on you, you have to send it off from a specific location. However, this alerts the crew, so that you cannot perfectly stealth it. And steal items should be more meaningful, things like slime extracts or plasma tanks are meaningless. Perhaps we could steal TG’s master server and its steal objective, as well as reduce the amount of research nodes needing to be stolen but them un-researching the stolen nodes. Stealing something should have a noticeable impact.
Assasinations get replaced with brain bounties, and the brains can be bought back at a ridiculious price. However, a brain being bought back does not fail the objective. Maroons get replaced with ‘shows of force’, requiring you to kill someone, leave a calling card or a signature on the body and take a photo of it, then send it away as proof. Planting bugs in offices and leaving syndicate graffiti/posters could be introduced as small side objectives.

Now, as for the backstories.

The hostage relative

Your parent or sibling are being held hostage by the Syndicate. They promise you that they’ll be released safely, as long as you do a couple of side jobs for them.
However, the crew of the station could attempt a rescue job. You’re given a password or special set of coordinates, that leads to a space ruin containing your relative and some Syndicate commandos keeping them held. Perhaps both the commandos and the hostage could be ghost roles, with them becoming NPCs if no ghosts pick them.
You could ‘win’ by either completing your objectives or rescuing your relative and delivering them to CC.

The debt

You owe the Syndicate quite a large sum of money. Instead of needing to have certain items on you at the end of the round, you have to deliver them to drop off location, or send off someone’s brain or a photograph of them being dead + some kind of signature/calling card from you as proof. This nets you reasonable amounts of credits.
To ‘win’ you must either deposit a huge sum of money towards a bluespace-linked bank account or have it on you at the end of the round, be it physical credits, or a sum of linked bank accounts of IDs on you. Which means yes, you could go around stealing ID’s of other people or mugging them for money to achieve this.

The mad scientist

You’ve found that Nanotrasen’s morals are far too restricting for advancing the field of science, and so you sought out different benefactors. The Syndicate has provided you with the means to further your research, as long as you do some odd jobs for them.
To ‘win’ you would be required to finish your crazy science doohickey, which would require immoral experimentation/brutalization of several crew, be it a horrific mix of cyborg and man, a horrible bloated mass of a Frankenstein’s monster or a bioweapon capable of wiping out all sentient life, or even a ritual to reach out towards the things beyond the veil. Finishing this could, perhaps, lead to a Blob/Swarmers/Morph/Blood demon spawning.

The legal trouble

The Syndicate’s got you by the neck, you’ve signed a contract you should not have and now own your life. Not completing objectives means, after a certain point in time, a hit squad gets sent after you, with ghosts controlling them. Or maybe even a Ninja.
You ‘win’ by either completing objectives or successfully defending yourself against the hit squad, as the Syndicate considers you to be not worth the trouble at that point. This one I honestly thought out the least so input would be appreciated.

The man who has nothing to loose

Either you were wronged by Nanotrasen so much you now seek out revenge or you were born and raised as part of the Syndicate and were trained to think of NT as your enemy. This would be the ‘trained assasin’ backstory, and would only be reserved for martyr/hijack/nukies.

I definitely think we could get a lot more roleplay opportunities from this and I’m very happy to receive feedback and new ideas and backstories.

15 Likes
2

I love this idea, and absolutely think this could work with Bee, even backstories that do no tie directly into gameplay, but simply motivation could work, but the extra mile of alternative means of completion is a fantastic idea!

4 Likes
3

had me at “backstories”

4

Sirio wrote a LOT on this topic a month back or something. There is a lot that can be used from what he wrote.

And I agree… Steal objectives need a touch up…

5 Likes
5

Oh damn, yeah, this is pretty similar to this

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6

I always liked the special objectives /TG/ had in their ‘‘progression system’’ the different approachs of objectives alongside their more new player friendly UI were something i thought we always needed, placing a bug on a head’s office, brain bounties, maroons could stay as long as people learn that their target can remain on the station alive lol

But yeah those backstories could help a lot to give flavor to the round, i’ll see if i can think of more when i get on the PC

1 Like
7

The idea is good but first, I really think the priority should be deciding where the server wants to be first. At its current state, it’s way too chaotic and reminds me quite a bit of Skyrat around 2018 - 2020 , where it used the RP label but in reality was pretty much a TG with no idea where to go.
If Bee wants more RP, it really has to slow things down a bit. Lower the number of threats per round ( especially in my humble opinion things such as vines, anomalies, spiders, blobs and such) would be a good start. We had this going through that direction with Swarmers being removed, I gotta point that out.

2 Likes
8

I completely disagree with this. Slowing things down will make the server another boring “RP” snoozefest where the only RP happening is bar RP.

Roleplay exists in the area between conflict and character. With no conflict, it will become extremely stale. Antagonists drive roleplay.

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9

I do think it’s a fair point that, currently, Dynamic tends to throw too many antagonists at the station, which swings back to no RP happening because there’s too much chaos.

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10

I agree.

I think that we should strive to have it so that the station doesn’t look unrecognizable 2 hours in and that there are no greenshifts.

Like a balance between boring and too much chaos.

but that’s a community driven goal I think…

2 Likes
11

I thought I was quite obvious about meaning it has to preserve more exactly what you stated, conflict between characters. Things such as swarmers, blobs, vines and such are boring left click sim that hampers exactly what you pointed out. That’s slowing things down.

12

Vines do make people RP, just not with them and vines, but between each other. Cargo is getting orders to bring in weed crates, MDs are constantly picking up new injured people, engineers are patching up breached areas. We could port TG’s sentient maneaters to make them harder.
Blob, on the other hand, serves as a good way to end the round. It also makes people band together against a common threat, but when it’s done with the crew is so geared up it’s pointless to throw another thing at them as it’ll be annihilated.

4 Likes
13

I don’t think the number of antagonists per se is the problem. I honestly believe it’s more about the high number of side things that happens along with the antagonists. The things I mentioned above are examples.
This server has a lot of capable players generally speaking. It would be nice to try to preserve more their interactions and conflicts instead of just throwing meaningless things that contributes to nothing and are just annoying to deal with.

14

Not a bad idea. My only recommendation is to either make the backstory portion opt-in or add a more open ended backstory so people can still write their own backstory reasons for their character being a traitor.

4 Likes
15

Slight issue with that is the martyr/hijack objective. Something real nasty must have happened for you to either make you agree on ending your life or becoming a mass murderer.

4 Likes
16

Perhaps the level of threat should scale with the capabilities of active Heads and Security VS. the selected antagonist. I’ve had rounds where I feel incredibly powerless and a good for nothing Head with no idea what is up or down.

When I say capabilities what I really mean is time spent on the server.

Also, stop with the damn gangbang of antags at the end of the round! Had one round where we got a Blob, Vines, and probably two more antagonists in the span of 20 to 30 minutes. All of which were taken care of quickly as the entire station was on extremely high alert. I do like intense rounds, but calm rounds can also be fun and interesting. Had a lot of fun playing as a drug dealer as AI with an ion law.

17

Also!! I’ve literally had shifts with 10 to 15 players where we have more antagonists than shifts with 50 fucking players. What the fuck? Some of my worst memories are when one fifth of the station are antagonists and I am a solo Head. Sharing my PTSD here.

18

Not much of an issue I can see here. If someone can not come up with a good reason for their character to do something like hijack they can choose a preset, but for those that wish to be creative or feel that none of the presets fit their character they can opt-out of the presets and come up with their own reason. Perhaps something too specific happened in your characters past for a preset. Maybe your character was secretly like this all along and now they are letting their true colors show. Another could be that the syndicate promised something too valuable to pass up on.

You could also just add in the second option. A preset backstory that is more vague and open ended, something along the lines. Your reasons for signing the contract are only know to you. Was it money, a deal you couldn’t refuse, or perhaps for good ole fun? Whatever it is you will get it once you do some little favors for the syndicate. Something like that.

19

I do like where the blob is currently.

I still remember the three hour shift where the blob and the crew was in a constant fight for over an hour! A ton of us ghosts were spectating excitedly looking to see who will gain the lead. However, whenever there is a blob people tend to simply go to the shuttle and wait, or simply continue doing whatever their job was before. Problem here is most likely Command being stretched thin or simply incompetent, most likely both.

COUGH COUGH
Swarmers.
COUGH COUGH
Sorry, rough cough.

Why the hijack objective? Can’t it be as simple as “John Syndicate himself requested their fancy escape shuttle and its crew. Keep as many as possible alive and bring us their shuttle.”.

I’ve prefer if we went further away from solid and measurable goals to a simple chaos scale. lol

Could say 10 is glorious death and 9 is hijack. Anything below is up to you. Get a few suggestions of high priority targets (people, items or otherwise) and it is up for you to decide what to do. You don’t need to follow it whatsoever and simply take the chaos level 1 as a chance to try out your Syndicate Blackbox of Magic™. Level 5 could be to mildly destabilize the station by destroy one department of your choice. Level 7 could be attempt to overthrow the station Command and convert it to Syndicate station.

So the chaos scale would be a guideline of how much chaos you may cause and for how long. Level 1? Push some dude into an emagged recycler or two. Why would it be level 1? You’d be made out quickly and promptly arrested, the people in question would be retrived and revived with no reason for you to RR them unless you have a high chaos objective and wish to remain anonymous. Reason doing whatever you’ve done? You’re the one who did it, you figure it out!

20

some people are endoctrinated from birth into that sort of thing IRL…